As portable electronic devices become more compact, and the number of functions performed by a given device increase, it has become a significant challenge to design a user interface that allows users to easily interact with a multifunction device. This challenge is particular significant for handheld portable devices, which have much smaller screens than desktop or laptop computers. This situation is unfortunate because the user interface is the gateway through which users receive not only content but also responses to user actions or behaviors, including user attempts to access a device's features, tools, and functions. Some portable communication devices (e.g., mobile telephones, sometimes called mobile phones, cell phones, cellular telephones, and the like) have resorted to adding more pushbuttons, increasing the density of push buttons, overloading the functions of pushbuttons, or using complex menu systems to allow a user to access, store and manipulate data. These conventional user interfaces often result in complicated key sequences and menu hierarchies that must be memorized by the user.
Many conventional user interfaces, such as those that include physical pushbuttons, are also inflexible. This may prevent a user interface from being configured and/or adapted by either an application running on the portable device or by users. When coupled with the time consuming requirement to memorize multiple key sequences and menu hierarchies, and the difficulty in activating a desired pushbutton, such inflexibility is frustrating to most users.
Many devices that are capable of playing and displaying digital video are the size of small laptops, and are, in fact, not handheld. This proves for more difficult portability. Other devices for playing digital video that are designed to be handheld may only be used in one orientation. The size of the screens of such devices is commonly quite small, and is therefore not conducive to watching digital videos. Moreover, having only one orientation restricts the user interface functionality because some functions (e.g., viewing a list of videos) may be more readily done in a portrait display orientation while other functions (watching a video) may be more readily done in a landscape display orientation, which more fully uses the display to show the video.
Accordingly, there is a need for portable multifunction devices with more transparent and intuitive user interfaces for video playback that are easy to use, configure, and/or adapt.